THE HEALING HEART

by Zelda Clemens

  “Samantha?”

  She shook her head. She looked back to her suitors.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was – drifting.”

  “L'attrait de la mer,” John said, then translated, “the allure of the sea.”

  “Sounds pretty in either language,” Sam said. “Something about the water . . . I’ve always . . .” but she didn’t know what she always.

  “Perhaps you need some rest,” Marc suggested. “I should go.”

  “No,” Sam said a bit too quickly. “I mean, yes. Maybe I do need some rest. But – but Major, I think, well maybe I might, maybe I might remember more. In time . . .”

  “If you think,” Marc said, his Aztec eyes lighting her soul.

  “Quite possible,” John said. “It’s amazing the things that the human mind can recall given the right stimulation.”

  “Then I’d like to pay a return visit.”

  “You would be most welcome,” she smiled.

  The two left her gazing out to sea. The staff cleaned the lunch. Samantha spent the afternoon staring out at the blue.

  ****

  Time and tides passed.

  John healed and was discharged. He went back to his businesses but often made time to lunch with Samantha. The man looked so different standing and walking in his tailored silk suits; he was like a fashion plate out of Top Gear. And he made certain that his invitation to Cannes was real. He had connections and Sam soon had her first passport.

  But Marc was no slacker. After two visits under the guise of an officer he took the military way and spoke with her as bluntly as he could.

  “Samantha,” he said with all of the bold boyish man in him. “I like –I like that you are always honest. So I think I need to be honest too.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” he said. “So I hear that you’re going to get out soon. So would you like to go out sometime? Catch a movie, have dinner? Maybe? Sometime?”

  “Yeah,” she smiled. “I’d like that.”

  “Aces.”

  Sam herself recovered well. There was barely a scar on her knee and the only thing that she had to show for her ordeal was a small scar from a burn on her wrist. And once she was discharged, her romantic whirlwind began.

  Dressed in jeans, her Air Force officer took her to the current comic-book movie where they giggled and talked and threw popcorn at the screen. They went for burgers and malts afterwards and ended up making out like teenagers in his Chevy in front of her apartment. And he didn’t push to go inside.

  Dressed in a Vera Wang evening gown, she was taken to the opera. John had box seats and the view and the music were electrifying. But John also had popcorn, and the two were hard pressed not to toss. The dinner after was most succulent, and the two ended up making out in the back of his limo all the ride to her apartment. And he didn’t push to go in.

  Samantha was living a dream.

  The rich man would take her to art openings and charity galas. The military man took her to baseball games and good bars with great music. She dined on lobster and lamb burritos. She danced in club-dresses and cut-offs. She kissed her men on dance floors and in the coat-rooms, and neither one ever pushed. They would explore and so would she. And she liked what she would find. And she liked that no one pushed.

  Then one morning as she was taking her jog by the river, her knee twitched. She stopped. She held the railing and rested. She flexed her good knee, then she flexed her healing knee as she looked out on the river. She felt a little warm and . . . and she thought that the waters began to glow beneath her, just a little. She stared and for a moment she was horrified when she saw a body floating.

  But then the body looked up at her and Sam saw amid the tangle of flowing hair the face of a beautiful woman. She looked so serene, smiling a hopeful sort of smile and looking straight into Sam’s eyes. Then the woman in the water held out her hand and Sam saw a small cluster of beautiful blue stones. The river began to rush. And the woman was fighting not to be swept away

  Sam stared. Then she looked around to see if anyone else saw.

  Runners kept running. Mothers kept mothering. Dogs were going crazy, but their humans thought them only dogs and so kept doing what humans do with crazy dogs.

  She turned back to the rushing waters and . . . there was nothing there.

  *****

  “Do you think that you were hallucinating?” John asked.

  It was Sam’s birthday. Both men had wanted to take her out to celebrate, and so unable to choose, she let them both treat her. The three sat in a very chic private dining room in a restaurant that had no menus, simply elegant service and sumptuous food.

  “Don’t know,” Sam mulled. “It’s been weeks since I’ve taken any medications.”

  “Perhaps it was a vision,” Marc suggested.

  “I hardly believe that could be the case,” John scoffed. “The gods and saints have been remarkable reticent over the past few decades.”

  “There are many more things in heaven and earth,” Marc began.

  “Than are dreamt of in your philosophies,” Sam finished.

  “Touché to you both,” John said applauding lightly, “the Bard himself. And while it may have been a foretelling quotation for the melancholy Dane, I prefer to put my faith in earthly science.”

  “I don’t know,” Marc said. “While I don’t doubt science, I’ve seen a few things in my business that defy logic.”

  “Oh do regale us with a story from your Air Force X-files.”

  “Classified.”

  “All the good bits are I suppose.”

  “Speaking of good bits,” Marc said. “This ice cream is wonderful. But why are they serving dessert after the soup?”

  “It’s called the intermezzo,” John said with a small grin. “It cleanses the pallet in preparation for the next course. And it is lime sorbet, not ice cream.”

  “I hope we get ice cream for dessert,” Sam chuckled. “I love Blue Moon.”

  The chocolate cherries jubilee was just as good.

  After supper they danced the night away in yet another exclusive club with a most excellent band, and Sam made sure to give each their share of slow dances. Marc then had John’s limo driver take the three to Mickey’s Dairy Bar where they feasted on Blue Moon ice-cream. And as both her beaus each had something for the birthday girl they ended up in her apartment sipping her sherry.

  Sam giggled like a little girl as she tore open Marc’s present. She laughed a full and hearty laugh when she saw the coloring book. It was complex thing with a sea theme; there were fish and mermaids and underwater castles. And he had thought to provide the colored pencils. She happily gave him a hug and a kiss.

  But John’s gift sent a wave of awe through the room. The simply framed painting was of a half-naked Nereid, a sea nymph lazing in a glittering undersea grotto. The woman’s hands were dripping with silver and jewels. Behind the cave opening a sunken pyramid loomed, strange and exotic fish floating nearby. Sam gazed at it as if in a trance.

  Then without a word she drifted into her bedroom. There she took down the whale poster on the wall opposite her bed and hung the marvelous image. All three stepped back and stared. John began to explain the work but she hushed him.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I want to just imagine. She’s so beautiful.”

  “She is,” Sam heard someone say, but she is mere oil on canvas.”

  She felt fingers trace her arm and she shuddered a little. She hugged herself against an imagined chill and then found herself easing back into those arms. Someone kissed her neck. Then someone kissed her hand and began to kiss up her arm.

  She reached back and wove her fingers through Marc’s hair. John had reached her shoulder and in a moment their lips brushed, then met full even as Marc began to nibble her ear. She sighed. John had her in a full embrace. She leaned her head back and his lips grazed her throat and began to lick and tickle. She turned and found Marc, then kissed him long and deep.

  S
he fell easily into their seduction. She surrendered as hands and fingers gently caressed and explored her. One hand lingered over her breast while another glided along her thighs. Someone worked the clasp of her dress and the silken garment fell away as if it were fluid.

  Lips sucked one nipple while fingers tenderly toyed with the other. A hand gliding along her hip and softly cupped her mound while another slid around behind. She shut her eyes as she kissed one and then the other long and lovingly. She moaned softly as she was swept off her feet and laid onto the bed. She was awash in sensations. She basked in the heat of their bodies as clothes were lost and flesh met flesh. She reached for and found them in her hands. Both were throbbing and as alive with lust as she was.

  Her panties were gone, and then a finger, and then a tongue began to delight her. Then she leaned over and heard Marc groan a lovely groan as she took him in her mouth. John lapped her to rapture while Marc went wild on her breasts even as she went wild on him.

  She was sweating and moaning. Her loins were on fire with desire and it was as if John knew her passion for even as she pressed herself against him, he pulled away. She hung, gasping a moment, but then sighed a long slow moan of bliss as he entered her. As he filled her with delight, Marc kissed her lower and slower until he was nestled against her hood. And as John began to thrust Marc suckled and lapped at her button till Samantha was a wailing mass of fiery ecstasy . . .

  And all that long lovely birthday night Sam made sure to give each their share of slow dances.

  *****

  The poet Eliot once wrote that April is the cruelest month. For Samantha it had become weeks of bewildering bliss. She had been at odds with herself as she dated the two. She knew that there would come a time when she would want to have sex with them, but she thought of that as a choice, and she didn’t want to have to choose.

  And so her decision had come as a blindsiding alternative.

  She had never even considered anything outside of monogamy. Indeed, if she had ever thought of such she thought of it as the stuff of romance novels and fringe religious cults. But there was Marc and there was John, both gazing lovingly at her that next morning. And the thing that mystified her most was that none of the three felt in the least awkward or shy or embarrassed. They happily tangled again by the full light of dawn as lovers will do. Then she made them breakfast. And as the two men both professed their adoration, they jokingly blamed their situation on the spell of the Nereid in the painting.

  Bewitched or not, they took to the affair as if it were the most natural thing in the world. They went out together and they spent their nights together. Marc and Sam luxuriated in John’s city apartment, complete with private rooftop pool, and the officer never felt at all belittled by the rich man’s lavish lifestyle and exorbitant treats. And on those occasions when one of her men could not make a date it was a sort of understood rule that the other two would not sleep together.

  So Sam spent the month as if a princess in a dream of a fairytale.

  As April waned and May approached, so did Sam and John’s date with Cannes, and she wondered how Marc might react to that. True to form, the officer was a gentleman, and simply asked that they bring him back a cool t-shirt. But fate stepped in with a mean twist know best by military wives.

  “I got sort of a new assignment,” he announced one afternoon as the three strolled the park watching the kites. “I ship out to Italy tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” Sam cried. “They don’t give you much warning, do they?”

  “It’s the way things work,” he said. “I’ve got this case and el Magnifico has surfaced.”

  “Who?”

  “The bearded bald man,” John said.

  “So why is a circus strong-man so important?” Sam asked.

  Marc just grimaced and shrugged.

  “It’s classified,” Sam said shaking her head.

  “Yeah.”

  “Speaking of important and classified,” John said holding up his phone. “I really must take this.”

  He walked away as Sam and Marc strolled on.

  “You know how long?” she asked.

  “If all goes well I’ll be home when you two get back from France. Maybe. Hopefully.”

  “I wish you could come with us.”

  “Me too,” he said turning to her. “Gonna miss you.”

  “Me too.”

  It was a moment designed for a kiss. The sun was warm. Children were laughing and there in the middle of everything two lovers were poised. And then John came back in a huff.

  “I am surrounded by idiots,” he declared. “Present company excluded.”

  “Somebody screw up?” Marc asked.

  “That is putting things mildly,” the man fumed. “I really must attend to the matter personally or I shall be cast into debtor’s prison and be fed bread and water for the next twenty years.”

  “The SEC on you?” Marc said with a chuckle.

  “Something like that,” John said with a frown. “I must be off post-haste, ergo I will not be able to join you this evening. But, I insist that you two carry on. My apartments are at your disposal.”

  “Now wait a-”

  “No, no I insist,” John said handing Marc his key-card. “Go. Indulge. Last night in town and all that sort of thing.”

  “You,” Sam said hugging and kissing him square on the lips. “Are so sweet.”

  Marc and Sam luxuriated in the pool, were catered to by the rich man’s personal chef, then broke their own rule and danced together and alone.

  ****

  Two weeks later Sam found herself on the French Riviera among the rich and famous; complete with a new wardrobe for all occasions. She dined with stars and directors, producers and critics and got her photo taken often as the paparazzi wanted to know who the new face was. She was even offered a part in a film as one producer fawned over her.

  “He just wants to get you naked,” Jon chuckled.

  “I know,” she said smirking and hugging his arm. “And I adore the flattery.”

  “Well my dear, if it’s flattery that you want . . .”

  On the fourth day of her leisure in paradise, John had a meeting with a studio executive, but left her in the hands of a charming middle-aged Spanish socialite exotically named Mariazinha DaSilva. The raven-haired beauty was introduced as a Lady-in-Waiting to some obscure Iberian royal family. But it turned out that Mariazinha was much like Samantha herself; a common girl thrust suddenly into that laps of luxury, and the Lady-in-Waiting was in reality, a nanny. The two fell in together as though they were sorority sisters lost in a foreign land.

  Maria, as she wanted to be called, was quite droll in her observations of the pampered class, and she and Sam often ended up in stitches. Sam had actually felt that she had found a friend. And when John called to say that his meeting was running late, the two decided to be done with their finery and the elite. They donned simple cut-offs and summery tanks and went to see the real city of Cannes.

  They found a most excellent little cafe that served plain and wholesome food. They danced together to a live local band and together fended off the live local boys. And as the night wore on and on, they strolled along the waterfront on their way home. Maria turned to her, took her hands and looked her straight in the eyes.

  “Samantha,” she said earnestly. “I would ask of you a most difficult favor.”

  “Sure,” Sam said smiling. “What?”

  “I need you.”

  “I don’t-” But she froze when she saw the bald bearded Adolpho. He literally took her breath away as he wrapped an iron arm around her slender waist trapping her arms while his hand clamped over her mouth. Her eyes widened in terror as she watched Maria take a syringe from her purse. She almost screamed as the needle plunged into her thigh.

  *****

  She dreamed. She dreamed that she was flying through a thick, blue sky. The warmth of the sun seemed distant, but the sky was not cold. It almost felt as if it were a part of her skin. She
was naked in that comfortable sky and she had a feeling of peace and tranquility. Then the air around her began to swirl and whirl. As if she had been caught in a vortex she began to be pulled down. Lower and lower she plunged and as she fell she heard a voice calling,

  “Samantha Pennopeai.”

  ****

  She woke in an empty room that looked as if it had once been so elegant. It was a big room with tall windows and no drapery, but they had bars. The brocade wall-paper was peeling in places and showed dark patches where paintings or other things once hung. The bed on which she lay was elegant enough, but made in simple sheets and a single pillow.

  She sat up. She was a little dizzy and her thigh ached from where the needle had pierced her. She was frightened, but she kept her cool. She was still in her cut-offs and tank-top, but her shoes were gone. She hadn’t been molested but the clamminess on her skin told her that she had slept a long time.

  “Hello?” she called out.

  There was no answer. She got up. The carpet beneath her feet was worn. She went to try the door but there was no knob. She knocked on it. She knocked and called, then pounded and screamed. She beat the door and shrieked until her fists ached and her voice was raw. Nothing. Then she turned her back to the door and slid to her knees. Her fear gripped her and she wept long and hard.

  Her brain raced with all sorts of imagined horrors. But the worst was not knowing. From the windows she had a view of a once grand courtyard, now rank and over grown. She thought to try and break the window, but the bars wouldn’t let even her slender frame through.

  She paced. She tried not to think and she tried not to cry anymore. She flopped onto the bed and beat the pillow. Then she heard a noise. It was the door! She flung herself toward it, but before she was halfway across the room it whooshed shut and she heard the lock.

  There was a tray with food and drink. There was also a newspaper in French.

  “Socialite Américaine Enlevée!” the headline shouted. “Ransom Exigé!”